Handheld electronic devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, digital cameras, and the like, offer mobility and a variety of services to their respective users. They are typically configured to transmit and receive data to and from other devices via a wired or wireless connection. Most mobile phones, for example, can provide Internet access, maintain a personal address book, provide messaging capabilities, capture digital images, as well as place phone calls.
Many devices, in particular mobile phones, can identify their respective locations within a certain range depending on the device and location identifying technique. Some devices can use sophisticated position determining systems, such as a Global Positioning System (GPS). The GPS is a satellite-based radio navigation system that uses signals from three or four satellites to compute the current latitude, longitude and elevation of a GPS receiver in the device anywhere on earth down to within a few meters. Other devices can use a location identifying technique based on which base station is servicing the device, that is, the location of the device is within a range of the base station from which a call is made. Other devices can use location identifying techniques based on triangulation between the device and at least two base stations.
The device's location, typically represented by geospatial coordinates, can be used in a variety of ways. It can be used to describe a digital image captured at the location and it can then be stored as metadata for categorizing the image. The location can also be used to link other information with the location, such as a favorite restaurant or bookstore. The location can also be used to inform other users where to meet.
As stated above, the location is typically represented by geospatial coordinates. Geographical information systems (GISs) exist that correlate geospatial coordinates with geographical data such as street address, location name and other information. Accordingly, the geographical data corresponding to the geospatial coordinates can be displayed to the user and/or utilized by an application in the device, e.g., to associate a location's name with an image.
While providing the geographical data of a location can be helpful, e.g., to orient a user or to categorize a set of images, the geographical data itself can hold little or no relevance to the user. For example, if the user has forgotten the name of a particular business, the address of the business is not particularly useful.
In a co-pending patent application entitled, System and Method for Naming a Location Based on User-Specific Information (Ser. No. 11/425,623), filed concurrently herewith and assigned to the assignee of the present invention, a name generation module automatically provides a name of a location based on an a temporal correlation between general information and user-specific information relating to the location. Because the name for the location is based on user-specific information, the name can be meaningful to the user. The user is not required to think of and to enter a name for each location, which can be tedious when several locations need to be named and when the most appropriate name might not be readily apparent to the user.
As stated above, the name for the location can be used for a variety of purposes including identifying the location for a meeting with another user. For example, the user can send a message to a friend telling him that the user is at “work,” or at the “gym.” While the names “work” and “gym” can be meaningful to the user, such user-specific names may not be meaningful to the friend. Moreover, the user-specific name for a location may be highly personal or classified, and sharing it with the friend might be inappropriate. Thus, the user would be required to enter another descriptor for the location, which may or may not be familiar to the friend.